By skilfully demonstrating before President Zail Singh in full glare of publicity that he continues to enjoy majority support in Andhra Assembly, Rama Rao managed to "nationalise" his unjust ouster from power. He spoke to Senior Editor S. Venkat Narayan from his hospital bed. Excerpts:

The stage for the dismissal of the NTR ministry was set meticulously. The coup of August 16, which began a day earlier, had been planned weeks, if not months, in advance. Nadendla Bhaskara Rao, the traitor in NTR's cabinet who finally upstaged him and usurped the chief minister's office, was nurtured with the care of an assassin keeping his dagger honed.

Within 24 hours of Bhaskara Rao ministry being sworn in, all
photographs of NTR had disappeared by a special order from New Delhi.
But that was only the beginning of rewriting the state's recent history - Bhaskara Rao style.

Film industry has pinned its hopes on a stringent and wide-ranging
Copyright Act struggling its way through Parliament last fortnight,
which provides for hefty fines and heftier sentences for anybody trading in or publicly exhibiting, illegally recorded video cassettes.

Fortune list of the 500 largest corporations outside the United States includes Indian Oil Corporation, Steel Authority of India Ltd and now Oil and Natural Gas Commission in the top 200 and all three continue to do well in relation to the other Fortune giants.

Annual import business of over Rs 1,000 crore is about to be taken away from the State Trading Corporation and handed over to the recently created public sector Hindustan Vegetable Oils Corporation. A Cabinet subcommittee will work out the final details in a few days, but the fur is already flying.

In power-starved West Bengal, it was bad enough news: no money for the Rs 500 crore second phase of the 1,260 mw thermal power project at Kolaghat, and perhaps no help from the state Government to the private sector Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation for a 120 mw power project in Calcutta.

When the markets do not know which way to go, they go both ways, sometimes up, sometimes down, but there are times when they just stay put, waiting for Godot. Right now they seem to be waiting for elections, general elections, that is.

A little over a year after the Movement for Restoration of Democracy of 1983, Pakistan is listlessly waiting for its blind date with an election currently being tailor-made behind the closed doors of the martial law regime.

Sikh leaders in north America view the free distribution of these
tapes as an invidious attempt to divide members of the community and are determined to fight this 'public relations campaign' of the Indian
Government.

The conference in Mexico City's Tlateloco Centre became not only the workshop for the World Plan of Action for the next decade, which it was intended to, but was quickly converted into an arena for the continuing battle between the industrialised and the Third World.

Mrs Gandhi would have served her cause better had she been a shade less disingenuous in making her I-wasn't-consulted statement in Parliament after the unwarranted dismissal of the N.T. Rama Rao administration in Andhra Pradesh.

Highly gifted Indian artists often tend to be wary of
government-sponsored exercises on their behalf and are cautious about
tangling with bureaucracies. Thus it has not been easy for Bharat Bhavan to attract the best and the most productive artists to its cause.

Cost of Irrigation project, originally estimated at Rs 58 crore, has now risen to a whopping Rs 180 crore. But all these costs and benefits do not mean much to the poor people who have been uprooted in the name of development. Last fortnight saw many of them decide to go on a fast to death from next month to draw attention to their plight.

The agitation against foreigners which began in Assam four years ago is
steadily spreading in all directions in the Northeast and is currently
threatening to overtake the tiny Himalayan state of Sikkim.

The Janata Party's accusation that the Congress(I) is trying to topple its government in Karnataka is no longer news. But now, ironically, it is the turn of the Congress(I) to accuse Ramakrishna Hedge's Government of attempting a toppling bid of a different kind - that of an 'idol'.

Whose side is the ruling party on? Judging by its actions in recent weeks, it seems to be giving the fragmented opposition every opportunity to forge some kind of a unified alliance before the coming elections.

Political observers had expected the Congress(I) to wait till the dust raised by N.T. Rama Rao's abrupt dismissal in Andhra Pradesh had settled before renewing its efforts to pull down the brittle Karnataka Government of Ramakrishna Hegde.

Dubai authorities refused to comment on the fate of the hijackers but discussions were still going on after the drama had ended between UAE,
Indian and US officials and there appear to be only two possible
alternatives; extradition of the hijackers to India or punishment under
UAE law for air piracy.

Justice S.N. Khatri of the Bombay High Court ruled that Antulay's bail
should not be cancelled, as it was not conclusively proved that he had
tampered with cement allocation documents during his chief ministership.

Ordinary people in the north are terror-struck. Life is completely paralysed in the Jaffna peninsula. Only some shops bother to or dare to raise their shutters, and that too for only a couple of hours in the day time.

In the verdant hills of Nainital, Almora and Pithoragarh districts of Uttar Pradesh, most village folk-songs sung after sunset contain a common theme: the winds of change are blowing through the thatched houses in the hills.

Who would have thought a quiet, reserved man like Kamal Nath Jha
could create such an uproar in the Lok Sabha? Last week, the Congress(I) member deserted his flock in protest against the ouster of N.T. Rama
Rao.